Law: Courts in Abusive Constitutionalism

Judge Lech Garlicki

Professor emeritus at the University of Warsaw, retired judge of the Constitutional Court of Poland (1993-2001) and of the European Court of Human Rights (2002-2012); Vice-president of the International Association of Constitutional Law (2011-2018) and one of the Founding Members of the European Law Institute. Member of several editorial boards, including International Journal of Constitutional Law and Annuaire International de Justice Constitutionnelle; Adjunct professor at the Lewis and Clark College (2024), visiting professor at Washington University in Saint Louis (2017-2024) and, between 2012 and 2017 at several other universities, including Yale, NYU, University of Chicago, Hong Kong University and Tel Aviv University.

In this talk, Judge Lech Garlicki will explore the targeting of courts as part of a phenomenon known as “abusive constitutionalism”: a process by which a democratically-elected regime exploits a nation’s legal and constitutional framework to consolidate power and weaken checks and balances. Such consolidation of power creates an unconstitutional deformation of institutions and procedures provided in the constitutional text. Courts (in particular, the supreme and constitutional courts) are the primary victims of the deformation process. The experience of Poland (as well as some other countries of the region) demonstrates complications resulting in the process of destruction of constitutional institutions as well as – later – in the process of restoring independence of the judicial branch. Symptoms of abusive constitutionalism are not limited to the so-called “new democracies”. The talk is also meant as a cautionary tale for more stabilized democracies, such as France, Israel or the United States.

RECEPTION TO FOLLOW

For more information contact Anne Aguirre, anne.aguirre@du.edu